This invention relates to an apparatus for sorting mail, and more particularly, to an apparatus for sorting mail according to bar codes which are assigned to the mail according to the results of reading out an address on the mail or codings.
In a recent mail sorting apparatus, through optical scanning, the address is correctly read out, and a bar code corresponding to the address is assigned to the mail. On the other hand, when the address is incorrectly read out, the result of the readout from the scanned image data is displayed by a display unit of a coding system. An operator, after seeing the display, keys in the address data to assign a bar code to the mail by a keyboard of the coding system. The mail bearing bar codes assigned in this way are sorted and put into corresponding sorting boxes according to the result of the readout or the coding.
The mail sorting apparatus described above has a drawback. When one operator is assigned to code the addresses in a state having a large area and thus consisting of many postal zones, he or she needs to consult a thick address directory or several directories to ascertain which postal zone this or that block belongs to. Consulting a thick directory or many directories is very time-consuming. Therefore, the coding efficiency is inevitably low.